This is the first picture we got of Avery :) This was at 8 weeks- my first Dr.'s appointment. This was taken after the Doc tried to just listen to her heartbeat, but found I have a really strong pulse in a really inconvenient spot. Instead of listening to her heartbeat, we would have to look at it. We knew we shouldn't get greedy with the ultrasounds, but we sure weren't going to argue with him. At first it took him awhile to find baby and get a good picture of her. He decided that he wasn't going to be able to print a very good one, but did his best. She looked like a blurry little white wisp. He said that I probably wasn't as far along as we thought. We were a little disappointed, but satisfied. Then, he decided to try one more time. And this is the picture he got. Her head is pointed down and to the left with her tiny arms and legs up and to the right. Kind of like she was going down a slide head first :) Here's a close-up:
As you could see from one of my previous posts, my early pregnancy consisted of a whole lot of reading and researching pictures and sketches of the baby in the womb at different stages. At this stage, according to the books and web, she should have looked something like a seahorse. I still would've thought she was an adorable seahorse, but then I saw this. Does that look like a baby or what? Maybe he caught her at a good angle, but all I see is a sweet, teeny, tiny little baby. Even when she was supposed to be a seahorse, she was a baby. Even when she was supposed to be a microscopic cluster of cells, she was a baby.
I can't help but take a second to express how deeply defensive I've been of this baby's personhood from the very beginning. Before a test could tell me she was there or not, I kept aware that at any moment she might be there. Pray always, friends, that more and more women will identify with this defensiveness. It's possible I just didn't notice them before I was pregnant, but there are pregnant women everywhere right now. Not all of them are Christians. Not all of them are married. Not all of them have moral compasses. However, most of them are celebrating their coming babies. Though nothing could be as encouraging as all of them knowing the Lord, I do find some encouragement in so many women being excited and hopeful for the child growing inside of them. Pray that they will be aware enough to know that the precious life they carry should never be considered something to discard, and that they express this awareness openly.
Back to the archives. Here's the first picture where you can see her from the outside :)
This is at 9 weeks. You can't see them, but I'm wearing my first pair of maternity jeans. I was pretty excited about them. I had been wearing the loosest jeans I own, and for awhile I used this elastic button thing that was supposed to give me more room, but it was no good. She wanted to grow and she was expanding her area quickly. Again, according to all those darn books, it was too soon to maternity wear shop, but something had to give. See what I did there?
I told this story on Facebook, but I'll tell it again here. I went to Old Navy to look for maternity clothes. As I always do at Old Navy, I rush past everything else and go straight for the clearance racks. I wasn't even sure Old Navy had a maternity section here, but I had seen lots of Old Navy maternity tops at the thrift stores, so I gave it a try. What did I find on the clearance rack but three pairs of maternity jeans in my size! However, they weren't priced for the clearance rack, so I decided to go ask an employee about them. Apparently I asked the right one, because he told me that they didn't actually have a maternity section, but that someone had returned those here, and they were regularly priced still. Which was like, $35 a piece. But, since they were in the clearance section, he told me he'd make them $10 a piece for me. Score! I still had to try them on, and only ended up getting the one pair, but I couldn't help but feel God had a hand in it. Little things like cheap pants can be a huge blessing at times such as those.
That's all for now! Thanks for reading!
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